6.6.13. Human Right #1: Right to a Healthy and Fulfilling Life

1. An Equal Economic Right that insures that all financial needs are accessible and available to ensure that the fundamental requirements of a healthy and fulfilling life can be realized and manifested.

There has been countless words devoted to Human Rights over the centuries. Some writers have even taken seriously the concept of a human right as something that belongs justifiably to every person. Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense which gathered Yankee support for the war against the Crown before the Revolutionary War, wrote another book that was nearly as influential for its defense of the French Revolution called, Rights of Man. In Rights of Man, Paine takes 31 points in outlining the justification for revolution against the government when the government fails to safeguards the “natural rights” of its citizens. Among other points under consideration, Paine claims that “rights” cannot be conferred through the political process for a reason:

It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few… They… consequently are instruments of injustice … The fact, therefore, must be that the individuals, themselves, each, in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a contract with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.

In our view, and with the benefit of hindsight, there are a few problems with this type of analysis.

Laws are created all the time that makes the populace more dependent on government and more dependent on making money to survive. Rights are not so much “given and taken away” as much as they are “bought and sold.” Yes, even in Paine’s day was the recognition of economic and political power concentrated in the hands of the elite, be it the newer and developing merchant class or the old aristocracy. What Paine fails to understand, or maybe didn’t notice, is that governments are not formed by people entering into voluntary contracts with each other. This is a Classical Liberal Romanticist fantasy meant to legitimize all kinds of political and economical deceptions that always seem to end up justifying the status quo for “Individuals” who are doing quite swell, thank you. And it doesn’t even begin to discuss the most glaring and intractable problem defenders of “liberty” never seem to ask themselves: how can a “right” exist when it can be overridden and invalidated so easily by another? Countries have always been formed, managed and maintained through deadly force. I need only to give the example of the United States of America to back up my assertion, born and nurtured under war, holocaust and slavery as it was. All the Liberal Political Scientists at the time of America’s dawning era were paid to spread beguiling stories and narratives about “We the People,” and “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Yes, they meant every single word of it… if you were a landowning White Male.

The Bill of Rights by the Equal Life Foundation represents the reality of what Human Rights can and ought to be… for EVERYONE, not just the few who believe that since they have access to wealth, only they have access to life. Since Governments have proven that they can create money and wealth using computers, paper and printing presses, our first Bill or Humans sees no reason everyone should not be entitled to what a few has allowed only themselves to enjoy. What we propose calls for a different social contract, and a different perspective, but it is not unintelligible or incoherent. Since money has become the lynchpin for gaining and possessing value in the system, let all in the system be valued. Thus we call for enactment and recognition of the basic Human Right for all persons to have their basic financial, educational and health needs met, equally and without delay.